For more Leo and friends all week long, listen to the TWiT Netcast Network

Saturday, April 30, 2005

Show #139

 toc | toc 

Matt Hartley writes:

Today Linuxfest Northwest will be streaming exclusive presentations from Google, Real Networks, and IBM among others. Broadcasts for the day include Chuck Gray of IBM at 11:30am and Chris DiBona of Google at 1pm PST. There will be continuous streaming video with sound throughout the day, but those are the ‘must watch’ streams at this point.

The streaming links will appear on the Linuxfest site at some point today or tomorrow. Text blogging coverage of this event can viewed as it happens at www.MattHartley.com. If for some reason you are not able to join us tomorrow for the event or even for the live stream, video archives of some the presentations will be made a little later on this next month. All of us from Linuxfest Northwest would like to thank Hardlines in Bellingham, WA for their generous help with streaming this event to the world at large. All questions regarding the streaming of this event can be directed to Matt Hartley.

Today’s news items

Tiger arrived yesterday. OS X 10.4 has over 200 new features, including Spotlight, Dashboard, and Automator.

Meanwhile, Microsoft revealed details of the newest version of Windows, Longhorn, due late next year, including some hardware recommendations. Got 3Ghz?

Microsoft also shipped the 64-bit version of Windows XP this week. But it doesn’t work with the leading anti-virus programs.

11a-Noon

Mike, Sweetwater, TX - how come my 1.5Mbps DSL is only downloading at 160KBps?

Look at the Bs. Bandwidth is usually measured in kilobits or megabits per second. But for some reason, download speeds are measured in kilobytes and megabytes per second. So multiply your download speed by eight (160×8 = 1.2Mbps) to get your throughput. And divide bandwidth by eight to get the maximum download speed (although you’ll typically get 20–30% less due to Internet overhead etc.)

Halley, Highland - gray screen of death

He gets a gray screen when he tries to boot Windows XP. Here are the steps I recommend taking to recover a damaged Windows XP install:

1. Press F8 on boot to get to the boot menu and turn on the bootlog - this is a text file that tracks the boot process. The last line in BOOTLOG.TXT is likely the driver or program that’s crashing the OS.
2. If there’s a damaged third-party driver, reinstall it. If it’s a damaged Windows system file, run the System File Checker from the command line: sfc /scannow
3. Use the Windows XP Install repair option (this is a last resort- I find it often makes things worse
4. try to get your data off the drive and re-install Windows.

Jake, from Irvine adds - HELP!!
I remember when Win 31. - 98 had to be reset down to “native mode” 800×600 resolution to reinstall Windows, does XP have the same situation? May I up the “ante” on this Gray Screen problem? I had to reinstall XP because of some serious networking issues; in the process of the install it goes to Gray Screen right after the start up “scrolling bars” across the bottom of the screen. Now it does that every time I boot up, even if I try to reinstall XP again. What’sup? Any thoughts Leo? Anyone? - Thanx.

Larry, San Clemente
Both you with the grey screen problem should try this process if hallys doesnt work for you

Boot the computer to Safe Mode options (F8 after BIOS) & choose:
“Enable VGA Mode”.
Go to Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs.
Find your graphics card driver package & uninstall.
While in Control Panel, go to System, Hardware, Device Manager.
Expand (Click +) besides Display Adapter,
Right Click your graphics card, Choose Properties, Drivers, uninstall.
Reboot the Machine - It will re-detect your graphics card.
Then re-install the drivers.

and jake, since it does it even when you try and install windows, it would seem that it would indicated a hardware problem, you should try downloading knoppix and seeing if that works, to isolate the problem, maybe it is a problem with your hardware, if knoppix boots and runs fine, then you know however that there is a problem with somthing in your software.

Byron, Ventura - can’t see backup

He backed up all his data to a 300 GB SATA drive, checked it to make sure it was good, then disconnected the drive and reinstalled Windows on his C: drive. Now when he reinstalls the backup drive it shows up but Windows says it’s a FAT-32 drive. Not possible. Make sure you have Service Pack 2 installed on that C: drive. Pre-SP2 versions of XP had trouble with huge drives.

For a good summary of drive recovery programs check back with Show 136.

Noon-1p

Bob on the 105 - Windows 98 to iMac

He wants to copy files from Windows to Mac using an external hard drive but wants to know if the Mac will read a Windows formatted drive. It sure will. In general, Apple supports Windows better than Windows supports Mac.
Aunti Mac, Mission Viejo - sage advice:
For teachers at our school district that buy a Mac and need to move things over from a Windows PC, including emails, files, etc., I use Detto’s “Move To Mac” application. Works great and is worth the bucks just in relief of the move grief. I won’t move applications, for obvious reasons.

Karen, Corona - HP 6110 AIO misses pages when scanning

According to the reviews at Amazon.com this is a buggy printer. I’d upgrade to the 7410 - an editor’s choice at PC Magazine.

David, Escondido - erasing the hard drive

User the free Tolvanen’s Eraser or the open source Eraser to overwrite your data to prevent recovery. Make sure to use a program that zaps swap files and slack space - data is often left over there, as well.

Davesays, Victorville

The best (by far) utility set I’ve used is Ultimate Boot CD It is a bootable cd with everything from several diskwipe programs to ram tests to HDD and file tools. Because it boots from itself (a linux CD) it gives you complete control of your chores!

Mikel564, New Ken, Pa.

I found a dos utility that will erase from floppy disk at www.myzips.com/software/ Active@-Kill-Disk---Hard-Drive-Eraser.phtml It will erase the entire HHD for you to reinstall OS

Santa Rosa Steve - Active@-Kill-Disk Bootable CD

I use Active@ Kill Disk - Hard Drive Eraser (Freeware & Pro). It can be found at <http://tinyurl.com/iqvc>. I do not have a floppy drive. I use Active@ Kill Disk on a bootable CD. Download the ISO image of a bootable CD with Active@ KillDisk at <http://tinyurl.com/8pr7d> and burn a CD. Instrucions and floppy disk versions can also be downloaded there.

David , Fond du Lac , WI - Darik’s Boot and Nuke

The boot utility I have found that works for me is called “dban” , and a floppy or CD version of it can be downloaded at http://dban.sourceforge.net/. It has a very simple interface and can wipe all hard drives in a system with a simple boot command that is “autonuke”. Or for the very security parnoid, you can command a DOD “7 times” wipe or even more than that if desired. Its one of the best freeware hard drive tools that I have found and I recommend it to anyone interested in securely wiping there IDE and SCSI hard drives. (Notice to all SATA drive owners, I have not found dban to work with SATA drives by default as it does not have SATA controller drivers.)

Kathy, Arcadia - missing HAL

http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_haldll_missing.htm
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;309283

Ken, Newport Beach - SQLite in Tiger

1–2p

Tony in Malibu - can’t open files he copied in XP

He doesn’t have permission to access the files. First make sure you’re logged in as Administrator. Then disable simplified sharing:

1. Click Start, and then click My Computer.
2. On the Tools menu, click Folder Options, and then click the View tab.
3. In the Advanced Settings section, clear the Use simple file sharing (Recommended) check box.
4. Click OK.

Now you can get the properties of the disk or folder, click the Security tab, and enable full access for the Administrator.

Read the Microsoft Tech Note.

Read about WinHEC on Extreme Tech.

Chester, Annapolis, MD - wi-fi card won’t work

His Toshiba laptop has an internal Wi-Fi card. It’s getting plenty of signal, even gets an IP address from the base station, and he can ping the router just fine, but he can’t get on the net. I suggested reinstalling the Network Connection. I don’t think it’s a hardware problem. Any thoughts?
Aunti Mac, Mission Viejo - sage advice:
You can “see”, get an IP and a strong signal, and even ping a WEP/WPA managed wireless router; but you won’t actually get in the door (connect) without the encrypted PW. Got WEP (on)? Duh.

RHNet:
Sometimes you think you have an IP but you really don’t. Try using static IPs first to see if that is a problem.

Chat Logs and Show Audio